Ian Fleming (author of James Bond) was known for his puzzling inconsistency

Persons with undiagnosed multiple personality usually look like everyone else, because alternate personalities are usually like spies: they remain incognito until their cover is blown (after which they will acknowledge themselves, you can interview them, and obtain previously unknown facts that can be corroborated).

One clue to the presence of unacknowledged alternate personalities is that the person has puzzling inconsistency (search “puzzling inconsistency” for past discussions). According to two biographies:

“…some remembered him as arrogant, prickly, and in general difficult, while others recalled a charming, handsome, witty, and lively young aristocrat…When he was nineteen…he was full of fanciful and imaginative accounts of his life, often made up on the spot, which he told to everyone at the school…The psyche of Ian Fleming was a battlefield. License and puritanical restraint…were constantly at war within him. One urge would control him for a time, only to be counterattacked in the next instant by its opposite” (1, pp. 1-2).

“The second son of a wealthy, socially prominent Scottish family…His investment banker grandfather…was a self-made millionaire…Ian was nearly nine years old when his father was killed [in WWI]. It was a catastrophe for the family, of course, but was not unnoticed by the nation at large. The event was notable enough for the London Times to print an obituary written by Winston Churchill… (1, p. 11).

“I was amazed to learn that Fleming had not graduated from either Eton or Sandhurst, which he certainly permitted and even encouraged me to believe. In fact, he even told me that on graduation from Sandhurst, he had selected the Black Watch as his regiment. I was also under the impression he left the foreign service for journalism. Actually, he had not; he never belonged to it” (1, p. 12).

Note: In multiple personality, some alternate personalities may give fanciful versions of personal history. As discussed in a past post, the novelist William Faulkner once cautioned interviewers not to ask him personal questions, explaining that he might give different answers to the same question on different occasions.

“…she was not the first or last person to be puzzled by the complexity of Ian’s personality. ‘He was a complete schizophrenic [she meant multiple personality]. He was tough and quite cruel, but at the same time he could be very sentimental' ” (2, p. 68).

“As she [another woman] got to know Ian, she became fascinated by his multifaceted character. She compared him to the layers of an onion: as fast as she peeled one layer away, there was always another. At the end she was not sure what was left. Ian remained an enigma. And that had its disturbing side. ‘You simply never could anticipate how Ian would behave. In a wreck I simply didn’t know whether he would go off in the first lifeboat, or go down with the ship…He was totally unpredictable” (2, p. 86).

“Ian seemed ‘really grateful’ to Ann for marrying him, recorded Lady Mary, but she could not help adding the caveat, born out of experience, that he ‘has more characteristics than anyone I know, and the opposite of each too.” (2, p. 225).

“…the contradictions of his character — the puritan and the libertine…” (2, p. 453).

1. Bruce A. Rosenberg, Ann Harleman Stewart. Ian Fleming. Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1989.

2. Andrew Lycett. Ian Fleming. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1995/2013.